Looking to buy a home? You may want to skip these places. Prices are either so high or incomes so low that many families can't afford to buy homes here, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index.
%Gallery-172312%
See more on CNNMoney:
Fiscal battle...
Continue Reading

By Les Christie
The film emperor may be striking back. For 25 years, filmmaker George Lucas tried to persuade his Marin County, Calif., neighbors to let him build a digital production studio on his ranch there, but the area's residents thwarted the plan.
So Lucas has come up with an alternative for his Grady...
Continue Reading

In the wake of the housing bust, almost 1 in 4 working families spend more than half their income on housing costs, according to a new study.
The study by the Center for Housing Policy found that both homeowners and renters continue to struggle with housing costs since the market tanked in 2008. Between 2008...
Continue Reading

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration may turn thousands of government-owned foreclosures into rental properties to help boost falling home prices.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency said Wednesday it is seeking input from investors on how to rent roughly 250,000 homes owned by government-controlled mortgage...
Continue Reading

Affordable rentals are becoming harder to come by as people decide against buying a home in the current distressed market. Well, here's an option you may not have thought of: Rent a room in a mansion. Alyssa Abkowitz of SmartMoney reports on this emerging trend that has average renters curling up in the lap of...
Continue Reading

Second homes were once only the provenance of the very rich. But decades of American prosperity (the last few years excepted) made the weekend home a middle-class dream. For many, however, it remains just that: a dream. But Kristine Hansen of our sister site, Shelterpop.com, explores how to make a home away from...
Continue Reading

Environmentalists might just approve of this cheap housing, a mobile egg-shaped home covered in bamboo and grass seed-filled burlap sacks. But will it catch on as a real living space?
Dai Haifei, a 24-year-old Beijing architect who developed the egg home, had been living in it on a sidewalk in the high-rent...
Continue Reading

You might not notice it while cruising down the Long Island Expressway on the Hampton Jitney, but Long Island, N.Y. -- once the epitome of the suburban dream -- is having something of a midlife crisis as politicians, civic organizations and developers debate how to create more affordable housing.
Yes, the place...
Continue Reading

Santa Monica has some of the strictest laws in California regarding affordable housing, including rent control and inclusionary housing laws (I'll explain more in a minute). However, the Santa Monica Daily Press details how JSM Construction -- builder of much of Santa Monica's downtown housing -- did not build...
Continue Reading

Brooklyn gained 660 apartments for low and middle-income New Yorkers on Tuesday, when the New York City Council approved the conversion of the former Domino Sugar refinery into a mixed-income community.
While units for poor and middle-income renters are desperately needed in neighborhoods such as Williamsburg,...
Continue Reading

Mike Valdez fits the profile of a savvy first-time homebuyer perfectly. A 34-year-old financial analyst from New Rochelle, N.Y., he and his family had grown sick of living the renter's life. So two years ago he decided to test the market and find a townhouse for his growing family. But despite his financial...
Continue Reading

It's a story that touches upon the nation's economic woes, the challenge of preventing sprawl, and the quirky ingenuity of the Pacific Northwest. But is the trend of renting one's backyard cottage really big enough to have any effect beyond the symbolic? Well, yes and no.
The focus of a recent USA Today...
Continue Reading

What should be done with the million or so foreclosed homes in the country? We've seen their empty swimming pools used as skateboarding parks. We've seen programs aiming to transform them into rehabber's dreams. And we've heard plenty about turning that empty housing stock into affordable homes.
That last idea...
Continue Reading

For years the housing rule of thumb was: It's within your means or affordable if it costs less than 30 percent of your income. However, a recent study suggests that the equation has changed. Commute times as well as your mode of transportation also make a serious financial impact -- so these elements now figure...
Continue Reading

There's a lottery in Chicago that will draw 40,000 winners. Sound too good to be true? Well, kind of, but not too far off.
The Chicago Housing Authority is getting ready to open its "Family Housing Wait List" for the first time in a decade.
After the four-week application window closes this summer, an...
Continue Reading

The recession may be over according to some economists, but it's still in full swing for low-income renters. A typical family needs to earn $18.44 an hour, or nearly $38,360 a year, in order to afford a modest rental home; that's according to a survey by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a Washington...
Continue Reading

What's the first phrase that "New Hampshire" brings to mind? Do you think "town hall meeting," "tax-free liquor" or "outer Boston suburb"? You'd get, at most, partial credit for any of those answers.
But if you say "first state in the union to get real about housing for working people," you'd be in a smart...
Continue Reading

What do an elementary school teacher, police officer and paralegal all have in common?
None of them can afford an ordinary home in Chicago.
This sorry excuse for a joke comes courtesy of the recent findings from a study released by the Center for Housing Policy, which concludes that owning a dream home might...
Continue Reading

When the community organizing group ACORN fell to a notorious video sting last year by conservative activists posing as a "pimp" and a "ho," some of the biggest losers were thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure. Fortunately for them, ACORN's affiliated housing organization has returned under a new identity,...
Continue Reading

Good news for public housing in New York City -- after years of crippling budget deficits, the New York City Housing Authority is finally getting some cash to take care of its buildings.
No matter how you feel about public housing, there's no denying that New York City's public housing has gotten a raw deal for...
Continue Reading

When Toll Brothers, the developer most famous for its suburban McMansion subdivisions, first eyed New York City in 2004, many here saw it as the beginning of an ironic twist to the story of real estate. Its City Living division raised luxury towers in neighborhoods that had been denizens of drug users or had...
Continue Reading

Shortly after the devastating earthquake struck Port-Au-Prince, noted architect pioneer Andres Duany flew to Haiti with plans for building durable, affordable housing in the shattered country.
Duany, a celebrated archtitect who has masterplanned whole towns and claims to have written the definitive book on...
Continue Reading